Metropolitan Nicholas: Pastoral Letters

Today is the Feast of Feasts, the Great Day of Gladness from which flows the heavenly light and joy in every Christian feast. Today is the Morning of the Eighth Day, the Day that rises above all night, and transcends all time. Today, eternity has broken into yesterday, and has made tomorrow new. This, truly, is the Day the Lord has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it! Read more...

I greet you in the Meekness of the Bridegroom Christ, Who calls us, in the depth of our hearts, to follow Him during this Great Fast, and to not betray Him.
In this annual season, we closely follow the events of the Passion of Our Lord, and we are frequently met by the disturbing picture of Judas the Betrayer. We are told, in the Gospel of St. Matthew (26.15), that he received thirty pieces of silver - about a half year's wages, almost $15,000 in today's funds - as payment for delivering his Lord into the hands of the enemy.
When we hear this, we quickly protest, and we say "We would have done much better." Read more...

In this season of the Nativity of Our Lord, we should think carefully about the fact that the Son of God was once a baby, a little child. This one fact is the most important determination of our opposition to abortion.
He was an unborn Child, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary on the Day of the Annunciation. From the moment of that mysterious conception, that unborn Child was never less than a Person, never less than fully God and fully Man. When He was born, He did not become a Person at that point, because He already was.In the entirely of His mission in the Incarnation, the Son of God sanctified, and gave supreme legitimacy, to the whole range of human life. His work, proceeding out of the eternal Counsels of God the Father, and empowered by the dynamism of God the Spirit, renewed human nature. He entered humanity, and became the head of humanity, thus establishing a single, united human nature. Read more...

Please be aware that the jurisdictions of the Ecumenical Patriarchate have been advised of the need for us, as the people of God, to act with mercy in alleviating the suffering of so many who have been affected by the recent earthquake and tidal waves in Asia. Please continue to pray for them in your parish. Read more...

There is a reason why the Church calls our thoughts to the story of the Wise Men, every year at this season. The story is an icon of the journey we must all make - a journey out of the darkness, through the winter, following a mysterious star to the radiance of the New-Born King. Read more...